Solar Power can now be generated at NIGHT! It's really TRUE!

Solar power is a fast growing contributor to our global electricity grids. After all that sunshine hits our planet during the day, some of it goes back up into the atmosphere, mostly at night time. Until now, harnessing that energy has been regarded as too difficult to do. But now a team at the University of New South Wales has achieved that elusive goal. So, can we look forward to 24-7 solar power?

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Original video about solar power (and perovskites)

ABC article

UNSW Research Paper (unfortunately behind a paywall)

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zentouro:

Climate Adam:

Kurtis Baute:

Levi Hildebrand:

Simon Clark:

Sarah Karvner:

Jack Harries:

Our Changing Climate :

[scottwilliams]

Interestingly the majority of the solar power technology originates either directly or indirectly from labs in universities in NSW, much of it under the direction of a single professor, Prof Martin Green, literally a genius in this field of solar. In fact the largest panel producer in China was founded by one of his PhD students who was coaxed home by his government in China to set up what has become the largest solar industry in the world.

[karlstathakis]

As my thermodynamics professor always told us: the climate crisis won’t be solved by a silver bullet, but by silver buckshot.

[jack]

Saying it could power your wifi router is generous. Lower power routers use around 5W. If they can improve the efficiency of these thermoradiative diodes tenfold to 18% (similar to good PV) instead of 1.8% and you had 20m2 of these on you roof you would get 0.45W of power, a tenfold shortfall on power demand of the router. I'm all for multiple solutions but this is really a distraction which in reality will have very low power niche applications if any.

[patrickcorcoran]

I used to work in an off-grid office for a solar installer back in the early 2000s. The ironically named MidNite charge controller often showed production on days with bright moonlight. For grid-tied systems the moonlight was never bright enough to turn on the inverter.

[alangilbert]

Thank you as always Dave - doing all that research and giving it to us in simple language.

[markofdistinction]

I was a scientist/engineer working with HgCdTe infrared detectors for night vision sensor for over 31 years. HgCdTe diodes are outrageously expensive. (some of the state of the art sensors the size of a postage stamp can cost tens of thousands of dollars). There is so little energy to be harvested per square inch that even if the cost can be brought down to that of modern "traditional" solar cells, the cost to harvest infrared energy seems impractical.

[zombilif]

Call you bozo? Never! You are awesome, Dave!

[Neilhuny]

As a poor supermarket worker I'd like to add my thanks to all the Patreons that support this channel! Dave Borlace is frigging brilliant - well researched, knowledgeable and a great communicator, we all benefit from these videos.

Now I need to persuade my flat-earther believing colleagues that cathedral spires have never taken power from the sky ....

[jonbeecroft]

You are quite right to cover this Dave! Perfect for low power IoT, although your eye candy cover picture is a little misleading 😂

[RichWoods]

"How the bloody hell do they do that then?"

An important question, one which isn't asked nearly enough.

[kcrobinson]

All we need is an observation of a change no matter how small. The work ahead is to magnifie the effect a million times to bring the benefits of this observation into a practical invention of endless possibilities.

[statsmad]

Interesting technology and something to look forward for potential commercial applications in a few years' time. The small device powering option seems the more plausible candidate.

[zatar]

Any techno trick that can turn ambient heat into usable energy is definitely worth looking into.
So far, this is just one more idea than looks good in the lab but has yet to prove itself out in the real world.
Even so, I'm always excited to hear about stuff like this because, someday one, or more of these clever ideas is going to make it out of the lab and prove itself highly useful

[dmazeau]

Most people think that a trip to the Sun would be very dangerous, but I have always thought the trip would be much safer if they just went at night. 🙂

[daphnescombine]

Thank you, Dave. The application for wearables is exciting. Yet another potential challenge and opportunity to harness energy that is currently being ‘wasted’.

I always enjoy your videos. Always positive and very easy for the layperson to understand.

[GoofieNewfie]

Back in 2012, we had a guy from MIT come in to do a presentation on solar, his company was researching materials to make full spectrum solar panels. They could detect and measure infra red and close spectrums but couldn't transform it into an economical usable energy. At that time it cost four times that of nuclear. Looks like the cost is coming down.

[patsommer]

As someone who painted floor black with a large south facing window, turning heat to energy sounds better than installing AC.

[lauriescott]

Always appreciate your research! Keep up the good work!

[twoina]

If you could improve the efficiency by a factor of 20 - which is very optimistic - we are at 50mW/m².
Let your watch have 10cm² of area for collecting, it would be 50μW in an ideal (!) situation. But only in the winter, you don't have the temperature difference in the summer.
An Apple watch needs about 50000μW on average! An simple Apple watch battery can provide 50μW for 3 years with one charge.

[brianmckeever]

"Form an orderly queue." So funny. Interesting idea!